Under U.S. pressure, U.N. pulls Iran's invitation to Syria talks

Syrian soldiers shout slogans of support for Syrian President Bashar Assad as they enter a village near the town of Jisr al-Shughour in 2011. Assad said he likely would seek a new term in June.

Photo: Associated Press file photo

WASHINGTON — Under intense pressure from the United States, the United Nations on Monday withdrew an invitation to Iran to attend the much-anticipated Syria peace conference.

With the invitation withdrawn, the main Western-backed opposition group said it would attend the talks aimed at ending Syria's ruinous three-year civil war.

The opposition said the conference should seek to establish a transitional government with full executive powers “in which killers and criminals do not participate.”

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, whose decision Sunday to invite Iran had threatened to unravel the talks less than 48 hours before their scheduled start, issued a statement Monday rescinding the invitation.

The United States said it was surprised by the invitation because Iran hadn't agreed to conditions for the talks, to be held Wednesday in Montreux, Switzerland.

Ban contended the Iranians had privately assured him they'd respect the conditions. But Iranian officials said their invitation came with no such conditions attached.

“Given that it has chosen to remain outside that basic understanding, he has decided that the one-day Montreux gathering will proceed without Iran's participation,” Ban's spokesman said in the statement.

The invitation also angered the Syrian opposition and Saudi Arabia — Iran's regional rival and a major backer of the Syrian insurgency — and they threatened to boycott the talks.

The United States' long-standing position has been that Iran, a major backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, must publicly endorse the 2012 Geneva road map for establishing a transitional government.

That mandate says the conference's purpose is to negotiate the establishment of a transitional administration that would govern Syria by the “mutual consent” of Assad's government and the Syrian opposition.

“Since Iran has not publicly and fully endorsed the Geneva communiqué,” a State Department official said Monday, “we expect the invitation will be rescinded.”

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in Moscow on Monday that leaving Iran out of the talks would be an “unforgivable mistake.”

“Negotiations involve sitting at the table not just with those who you like, but with those whose participation the solution depends on,” Lavrov said at a joint appearance with the foreign minister of Norway.

The United States and several of its allies have opposed Iran's presence at the conference in part because Iran has been a strong supporter of the Assad government, sending it arms and paramilitary fighters from its Quds force.

Lavrov, in arguing for Iran's inclusion, noted that several other countries that directly backed one side in the conflict were participating.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, has long argued that Iran, as a major regional power, should be included in the talks. But he said last week that the decisions on whether to invite Iran had to be made by consensus among the United States, the United Nations and Russia.

For his part, Assad said once again that he wouldn't share power with his adversaries or accept the creation of a transitional government.

Assad told Agence France-Presse that the talks in Switzerland should focus on what he called “the war against terrorism” in his country. He described the idea of sharing power as “totally unrealistic,” and said he probably would seek a new term as president in June.